Water, Water, Everywhere: Life of Pi

Life of Pi is many things to many people. It can mean Yann Martel’s deeply philosophical novel, which after numerous rejections came out in 2001, immediately attracting readers and winning major prizes. It can mean the 2012 film version, which nabbed eleven Oscar nominations and won four statuettes, one of them for Ang Lee’s inspired direction. It can mean the stage adaptation I saw recently in Los Angeles, following residences in London and New York.

 The stage and film versions of course have to meet the challenge of depicting a boy on a small boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And, oh yes, his companion throughout this watery journey is a large and very hungry-looking Bengal tiger. The production I saw at L.A.’s Ahmanson Theatre was heavily reliant on what we might call stage magic. The show effectively used both light and sound to suggest the briny deep. And that tiger? Here the production team turned to an artform that has earned respect on western stages only in the last fifty years or so: puppetry. When we think of puppets, it’s easy to focus on child’s play: on Punch and Judy or on their rather more sophisticated cousins, the Muppets. Other cultures, though, have made deeply serious and deeply adult use of puppets in their theatres and even in their religious rituals. (See the shadow puppets of Indonesia who act out sacred myths on behalf of the whole community.) I’m personally a big fan of Japan’s bunraku, in which large doll-like puppets perform traditional romantic stories that can be poignant, even genuinely tragic.

 I credit Julie Taymor with discovering that puppets belong on the Broadway stage when in 1997 she took on the challenge of directing The Lion King, a live-action version of the beloved Disney film. Ten years later, a best-selling novel called War Horse was dramatized in London, featuring life-size horse puppets manipulated by several well-coordinated actors. In Life of Pi, two highly-trained human performers slip under the skin of that tiger, and others in the cast make a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a large turtle come to life before our eyes. 

 The movie version of Life of Pi poses different challenges. Movies by their nature need to look real; there’s not the willing suspension of disbelief that distinguishes an audience response to a theatrical performance. Filming on water is hardly easy. That fact was acknowledged by my former boss, Roger Corman  when he turned down a chance to make an early version of Water World. (Kevin Costner’s 1995 take on this futuristic story, in which rising sea levels have made dry land mostly disappeared, was seriously weighed down by a huge production budget.) Still, these days it’s not impossible for a well-trained movie crew to make a large tank on a studio lot look like an entire ocean.

 But the challenge of the cinematic Life of Pi was less the ocean than the animals. Here’s where modern CGI came into its own: the film’s central critters are almost entirely computer-generated, and the young Indian actor playing Pi was never in contact with a dangerous wild beast. (Needless to say, Suraj Sharma’s role was not an easy one: he had to react to the moods and moves of creatures who were simply not there.) 

 The Oscars won by Life of Pi are a testament to the film’s technical brilliance. In addition to Ang Lee’s directorial triumph, the film was honored for its remarkable cinematography and visual effects. To be honest, though, it’s not as riveting a movie as the eventual Best Picture winner, Argo.